Built to Fail: Why America Needs an Education Overhaul

  

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     This week I watched a TED Talk by Geoffrey Canada,  titled “Our Failing Schools. Enough is Enough!”. In this TED Talk, Canada discusses some observations he’s made in the American Education System, and he shares some of his frustrations with the lack of growth in the industry.

During the talk, Canada focuses greatly on how little the American Public school “Business model” has changed in over 50 years. He says “Look, you go into a place that's failed kids for 50 years, and you say, "So what's the plan?" And they say, "Well, we're going to do what we did last year this year." What kind of business model is that? (Canada)”. This is the basis for Canada's talk, the idea that millions of American students are failing academically and we aren’t doing anything to fix it.

Later, Canada moves on to talk about the growing evidence that science and technology need to have a greater role in the education system, “Technology has changed. Things have changed. Yet not in education. Why? Why is it that when we had rotary phones when we were having folks being crippled by polio, that we were teaching the same way then that we're doing right now?” (Canada). Science and technology have completely changed the way we look at early learning and child development. Breakthroughs in our understanding of brain development have led to many new ideas and technologies for learning. Today, educators have greater access to education technology and student data than ever before, but the current model doesn’t effectively use these tools. When discussing our knowledge of brain development in young adults, Canada says, “We didn't know the role that language, a stimulus and response, call and response, had in developing those children. We know that now. What are we doing about it? Nothing. Wealthy people know. Educated people know. And their kids have an advantage. Poor people don't know, and we're not doing anything to help them at all. But we know this is critical.”, today the topic of equality is at the forefront of any social problem. But historically marginalized groups in our society are still being weighed down by an education system that does not treat them fairly. Many low-income school districts cannot afford to have experienced teachers on their payroll, so they have to opt for new teachers who do not yet have the experience to truly help their students succeed. This is one aspect where the system fails teachers. Many of these young teachers want nothing more than to see their students succeed. Why don’t we give them more tools to advance their teaching skills and help their students?

    We as Americans are raising our children in an institution that cannot adapt to the times. We know that the system doesn’t work, but we still keep it around. The problem is that our education model is just too antiquated. We can’t start from scratch, but Canada argues that we have to make a step in the right direction soon, saying, “I know there's an educational cliff that we are walking over right this very second, and if we allow folks to continue this foolishness about saying we can't afford this — So Bill Gates says it's going to cost five billion dollars. What are five billion dollars to the United States? What did we spend in Afghanistan this year? How many trillions?“. In this quote, Canada is referencing a talk made earlier that day by Bill Gates about his plan to build a self-improvement system for educators.

The aforementioned plan proposed by Bill Gates is simple: set up a camera in the classroom. A teacher could then decide what videos to contribute to the network. Other teachers would be able to view the class footage and make comments or take notes from the lectures posted. This plan opens teachers up to discussion from their peers across the country. Ideas can be shared, critiques can be made. The best teaching methods for a certain topic will float to the top, and new teachers can learn from their more experienced peers. The idea wouldn’t be to punish teachers or add more pressure to their already stressful jobs, but instead, allow them to adapt to new ideas and grow their skills as educators. In his talk, Gates states that “Diagnosing areas where a teacher needs to improve is only half the battle. We also have to give them the tools they need to act on the diagnosis. If you learn that you need to improve the way you teach fractions, you should be able to watch a video of the best person in the world teaching fractions. (Gates)” I think that this idea fits perfectly into the observations that Canada makes in his own TED Talk. Canada was frustrated when he saw the schools he grew up in continuing to fail students left and right. But what if the teachers were able to see what topics the students failed in, and were able to adapt their lesson plans according to a plan that was shown to be effective by another teacher in the real world?

    There is a long road ahead of us on the path to giving every student the education they deserve, but by providing better tools to help aid teachers in their classrooms, we can begin to bridge the gap between failing and passing students, rich and poor alike. Sometimes new ideas don’t come to fruition, but as Geoffrey Canada says “The fact that you have failure shouldn't stop you from pushing the science forward.”

Sources:

Canada, Geoffrey. "Our failing schools. Enough is enough!" TED Talks Education,      May 2013. Speech.

Gates, Bill. "Teachers need real feedback." TED Talks Education, May 2013.

     Speech.